Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut off from the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong contrast to each other.  I always required the stimulants of companionship and applause.  Perdita was all-sufficient to herself.  Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my disposition was sociable, hers recluse.  My life was spent among tangible realities, hers was a dream.  I might be said even to love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends, for they interfered with her visionary moods.  All my feelings, even of exultation and triumph, were changed to bitterness, if unparticipated; Perdita, even in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go on from day to day, neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling in another mind.  Nay, she could love and dwell with tenderness on the look and voice of her friend, while her demeanour expressed the coldest reserve.  A sensation with her became a sentiment, and she never spoke until she had mingled her perceptions of outward objects with others which were the native growth of her own mind.  She was like a fruitful soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forth again to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but then she was often dark and rugged as that soil, raked up, and new sown with unseen seed.

She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through poplar-shaded banks into the lake.  I lived with a farmer whose house was built higher up among the hills:  a dark crag rose behind it, and, exposed to the north, the snow lay in its crevices the summer through.  Before dawn I led my flock to the sheep-walks, and guarded them through the day.  It was a life of toil; for rain and cold were more frequent than sunshine; but it was my pride to contemn the elements.  My trusty dog watched the sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous of my comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of our schemes.  At noon we met again, and we threw away in contempt our peasant fare, as we built our fire-place and kindled the cheering blaze destined to cook the game stolen from the neighbouring preserves.  Then came the tale of hair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs, ambush and flight, as gipsey-like we encompassed our pot.  The search after a stray lamb, or the devices by which we elude or endeavoured to elude punishment, filled up the hours of afternoon; in the evening my flock went to its fold, and I to my sister.